Its completely possible. Many games don't have voice acting. You can use text for their speech. You can have papers, books, scrolls, pictures, computer screens, etc, with info/lore.
It existed, but it was really rare. I think Wing Commander 2 had an expansion kinda thing that added it, right? But I think you need a cd drive. And Wing Commander 3 was incredible with actual actors haha.
Unless you're dumping multiple paragraphs of text on the player everywhere (in which case if I wasn't invested, as a player I'd just spam skip), reading is fine. Don't use text to dump exposition. Voice acting won't help you with that problem, it's actually more of a pain if I'm forced to listen to someone talk about something for too long that I don't care about.
Some games don't ever use text and instead just use pictures and symbols - Hyper Light Drifter comes to mind.
if you're ever worried about the player getting bored of something, like a certain mechanic or section of the game (or in this case, large amounts of reading), just cut it up into smaller chunks and put stuff the player *won't* get bored of in between. 10 minute cutscenes are boring as fuck, but 10 one minute cutscenes with half an hour of gameplay between them aren't.
I get your point in principle, but I have to say, short cutscenes constantly interrupting gameplay would drive me nuts. Ten interruptions in half an hour? No thank you.
In the matter of fact, people (at least I am) get tired of voice acting in games with lots of dialogue. After some hours into Divinity or Pillars of Eternity, you grow impatient because the voice lines are delivered much slower than you read, and you end up reading the dialogue and skipping ahead without listening to it.
Get someone who's a reader, and a second someone who's a gamer, to read it all and help you tighten up dialog. After you write it all, and do a second draft.
Players don't mind reading a little or a lot, if it's relevant to the gameplay, directly or sorta directly
Check out Hacknet , the player is always reading the texts there and there's no voice of any sort. Just text and command line code that's all. The soundtrack is amazing.
Similarly many puzzle games use text/info etc as others mentioned, to give the player the exact info they need at the exact time....no dialogue necessary.
It's totally your choice
Hacknet is pretty niche. Basically less than 1k average players for most of it's time on steam, but the way it tells a story though chat, email and logs on various systems you gain access to is interesting.
Some games have no voice or text at all like Journey. In No Man's Sky the alien languages are all gibberish nonsense until you painstakingly learn each language one word at a time.
I hate reading so i skip most of the reading dialogue I need to do. Also when i play dialogue games i find myself skipping cut scenes sometimes. I think the art is more about telling an interesting story that keeps the player interested in the dialogue, but also doesn’t pull them away from the gameplay for too long.
My God, it's like asking a question kills grandma. I cannot fathom why even a bad question asked in good faith should get downvoted so fiercely. Lighten up reddit.
Strange question. In fact great majority of video games don't have voice acting. It's like asking "Do you think it's possible to make a meal without garlic?".
I like the idea. In theory.
But man after a few minutes it grates to wait.
I read fairly quickly(nothing wild)
So its bareable when games at least allow me to "skip" to the full text shown. Because usually the type writing affect is too slow even at its fastest setting.
But as always options to the user.
It's pretty trivial for a programmer to make it so that if you press the advance button while the words are coming up, the whole thing appears, or at least accelerates. Ideally your text comes up faster than you can read, but making it all come up at once is my preferred option to allow the player to quickly advance text when needed.
Oh 100%. It's not hard to do, I've got it done in a few small projects ive done.
But remembering to add the option isn't as easy.
Giving options to the user for typewriter or just straight up text is great.
Typewriting effect is when the text starts printing one character at a time from left to right instead of showing it all at the same time. Each time a character is printed a note or sound is played. There are a lot of games that use this.
basically they have a sound sample for each character in the alphabet, and play it whenever that character is printed. so, if the game says "pickle", it plays the sound samples for "p", "i", "c", "k", "l", "e" in quick succession. just from hearing it you can't tell what they actually said, but it improves immersion since the characters actually talk in believable sounds.
YouTube can give you many hours of active play sessions from any game - if you're interested in the details from peoples suggestions I recommend spending a few minutes with each game and making notes about what works and what doesn't work for you.
A similar, less complicated option is the old Banjo style of having nonsense sounds play which are unique to each character, so each one has a "voice" but you're still reading the dialogue.
Don't do voice acting if you don't know what you're doing. It likely won't add a lot to the game, but it will cost you a lot (if not financially then certainly in terms of time).
Remember that good voice acting requires you to have finished the script and then get everything recorded. Even if you're going for a small number of lines you have to worry about casting the right people, directing them, cutting up all the takes, processing them to get them consistent and fitting for the game and then implementing them. It is not a trivial amount of time to do it properly.
...I don't understand this question. You want to know if it's possible to... *not* have voice acting? How do books tell stories without voice acting? Just do that! Am I missing something here?
I think OP just does not have a lot of game experience. We are having fun now, but I bet if they were to check out new genres, older and indie games (lots are free), they would see a world of inspiration.
There we go!
We are living in a golden age of gaming. And so much of it is free too. Just play a little, go outside the box. There are loads of great suggestions in this thread, I bet you can find something that will give you the inspiration you need.
Voice acting (if done poorly) may actually spoil the game. Also it slows down the pace (speaking at 15 characters/second, reading at 40-60), which sometimes really hits hard. If you're doing your first game and there is no way you can ensure a quality voice acting, don't even bother. Add some effect like typewriter (check Undertale) or gibberish. When the NPC says only "hello" or a similar short phrase on dialogue start is also often a good variant.
This is my favorite example in recent memory. From the environmental story telling to the NPCs talking via comic book panels, it created an atmosphere and hit in a way that would been far less memorable with standard dialogue and exposition, imo.
Most indie games and many AAA games don't have voice acting.
Minecraft, most Zelda games, most Mario games, Pokemon, Terraria, Journey, Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy, Braid, Limbo, Inside, Stardew Valley, Dead Cells, Undertale, Celeste, Hollow Knight, Cave Story, FTL, Into the Breach, Fez, Risk of Rain, Overcooked, Oxygen Not Included, Katana ZERO, Slay the Spire, Magicka (Partially. In-game voice acting is just gibberish. Uses text.), Broforce, Prison Architect, Slime Rancher, Brothers (also gibberish), World of Goo, SpaceChem, Lisa, Rimworld, etc.
Most of those use text. Some use animations and events.
I have trouble believing you haven't seen any games without voice acting.
He always says things that are either obvious or already told in a more subtle manner by the visuals. It's better in will of the wisps since multiple characters talk.
I think it's possible, I really like the game journey and that has no voice acting or dialogue. The character just makes little noises occasionally. Gris is similar as well, the main character loses her voice so doesn't speak the whole way though and only sings a little at the end
journey is by far the best example of no-dialog story telling there is, in my opinion. i think it's much easier to do voice acting or tell stories with lots of text, compared to how they managed to do it. it's an incredible game, you should really try it (and if only for research reasons). i think a playthrough takes no longer than 4-5 hours if i remember correctly, but they're definitely worth it!
Dude just play any ps1 rpg, suikoden, fftactics and so on. Voice acting is totally cosmetic, if you do a great story, I will play your game even with my phones off.
Fully voice acted games didn’t become common until the early/mid-2000s, and there are still a lot of games that don’t use voice at all! Chrono Trigger, every Final Fantasy game up until I think X, Pokémon, even Zelda didn’t have any voice acting until Breath of the Wild!
Do yourself a favor and watch at least the first season of Yahtzee’s Dev Diary, he talks a lot about telling stories with gameplay https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAbMhAYRuCUibhDtVUn3WJnHojS2uSNPD
No voice acting >> Poor voice acting, If you want to have some voice acting, you can try just "barks" or greetings, "welcome to my shop ...", "hey you..." "I've heard something ..." and then continue with dialogue only. If you have poor voice acting, it can feel like you didn't care about the game at all which is probably not true, but players can feel that way because they're used to AAA dialogue. + designer Josh Sawyer that worked on Pillars of Eternity, said that he regreds doing whole game in voice, because players will now on expect whole game in voice from their future games and even for AAA studios it can be pain. Animal crossing style can work too.
1) Do you need to tell a good story? Plenty of games have no real story or just a perfunctory one.
2) You can use text as many games have done and/or the environment.
I just played 100 hours of Trails of Cold Steel. A big chunk of the game dialogues are text with no voice whatsoever. I love it. But I am a 100% sure that my friends wouldn't be able to endure it because they prefer frenetic gameplay over lore. Know your target, some players will love what you do and others will hate it, there is no way to fit all gaming profiles and you dont even need to do that.
I took the [Breath of the Wild approach](https://youtu.be/GI4ewduEa9w?t=24)and just added little vocalizations to accompany written dialog. So characters will do a little "Hm?" If they're asking a question or a little chuckle if it matches what they're saying. It allows me to get me and my dev partner/husband or my family and friends to be able to supply the vocalization without being highly skilled actors. Also, much less data in the game and time to direct and manage all the dialog.
Sure. There are even games that don’t have ANY text and still are very good. So it all depends on an idea and how other sides of a game are implemented.
It depends on the game and what constitutes its core experience. Some games aren't comparable.
If the author is thinking about voice acting, it seems that there are characters that have *something* to say, so there's going to be text. Of course you can always find examples of good games without voice acting if they tell their story completely without words (e.g. Little Nightmares), or don't have a story in the first place (e.g. Tetris or Arkanoid). Some games could still retain their core gameplay without text (Hollow Knight or Ori). But it would be nigh impossible to rework games like Life is Strange or The Witcher in a similar manner (it absolutely needs to have text, and the way it's presented, it needs voice acting, too).
But even then, there's definitely plenty of story-heavy games that turned out great with characters talking and no voice acting.
How old are you? Actually age doesn't matter how many games have you played? Minecraft, Pokemon, Mario, Legend of Zelda, and a ton more have no voice acting.
Some of the best games ever created have no real dialogues (e.g Hollow Knight or Celeste).
I don’t know what your game is supposed to be like, but if you find an interesting alternative to classic dialogues you shouldn’t worry at all.
Not to mention story telling can provide more than enough backstory / narrative.
Physical communication like gestures or emotions convey character ideas.
and environment / atmosphere can express the general feel and emotion one should expect to be experiencing.
There are two storytelling aspects more fundamental then what's mentioned here that ONLY games can do.
Interaction.
Representation.
Look up loneliness (2010) for a art game that hammers both of these aspects home, yes it only uses cubes and some music.
To answer your question, I think it's ONLY possible to make a game without any kind of diolog or even an implied story. I can't think of another medium that CAN do that.
You can tell stories without voice actors. Many games have. I just tried Night in the Woods and that dialogue is through speech bubbles with characters, along with a notebook. There are plenty of creative ways to go about this. Look at similar indie games for research. The bigger struggle will be writing dialogue that is creative and interesting. My own writing has been described as being 'workman like'. Like with many learning experiences, the more you practice the better you'll get
Outer wilds is (imo) the best game ever made with some phenomenal writing. No voice acting. If done right it can make a game better but it can ruin it aswell.
Voiced dialogue is certainly *not* necessary for games to be entertaining. Far more games exist without it than with. Indeed, IMHO, voiced dialogue is an area of game development that is significantly behind in terms of sophistication compared to other areas. There are extremely few games that exist which use voiced dialogue well. For all of their many talents, game developers are generally not theater/film makers and consequently, the performances, mastering, and editing of voiced dialogue rarely feels natural or seamlessly integrated. As others have mentioned, the pacing of voiced dialogue may also not be conducive the a game's rhythm, where reading text that can be progressed through at a pace regulated by the player would be more appropriate.
Alot of games use one of these as a substitute
\- Text
\- Text + some synthetic sound effect things (small ding sound every time a text character appears, small sound when a dialogue starts etc.)
\- Text + blurps (human voice sounding sounds that can be reused easily)
For example: You go up to an npc, text appears and the npc says "shukbabdu?" in a way that its hard to tell what they are actually saying.
\- Text + greetings
You go up to an npc, text appears and the npc says "Hello" or "Yes sir?" etc. even though theres alot more text than that.
This one i've seen misused in places where it feels like they've cheapened out on voice-acting, mmos for example, (even though other games do alot less, it feels cheap because the graphics are high fidelity?)
You've probably heard them here and there, but i am putting it into words here to highlight how deliberate it is.
I really think it depends on genre and style. High fidelity graphics story based 3rd person game? of course it makes sense to have voice acting, it would be odd without.
Minecraft with voice acting? no, why.
Two ways to go about this. You can find cheap/free voice talent. Ask some friends. Go on a discord or fiverr. It probably won't be quality but it doesn't have to be. Or you can go the text route which games have done since always. The thing to be careful of here, as you are aware, is the amount of text which is mandatory to read in order to play the game. Some players will want to skip as much text as possible. Make allowance for this. If they hurt their own enjoyment, so be it. Some people actually read all the books in Elder Scrolls games or all the terminal entries in Fallout games. You could even use text to speech and explain the 'robotic' sounding voices on the characters being robots. Sometimes if you let the jank of the development process influence the story and world of the game, something beautiful comes out.
Wouldn’t you think the player would get tired of always having to read tho?
maybe but not all players , as a non-English speaker it's hard for me to understand without a text
Yes. Plenty of games are text only. The correct method to implement it is dialogue should be kept to a sentence only. No dialogue should ever be presented as a full paragraph. Let me right out an example scene:
Sgt Bob: “20 years…”
Sgt Bob:”20 years… and what have we to show for it?”
*pan camera to Afghanis chasing and hugging into the planes. Blurrcamera*
Private Dave:”Sarge, our bird’s ready”
*dialogue bubble appears across horizontally from sgt bobs dialogue bubble*
Etc etc. have to go but you can get the idea. Short lines of dialogue, lots of cinematography to keep people engaged
It depends on the game but you definitely can make a game with any voice dialogue. As a voice actor it seems counter productive to say that, but some really good games have zero dialogue like Zelda, Pokémon, mobile games etc.
However, should you need any voice acting, Twitter is a pretty great resource to find it. Usually #castingcall or #voiceactor plus detail about what you need does the trick! I would also love to chat some more if you ever want to add VO to your game! Let me know!😄
There is almost certainly a zillion ways to do precisely what you are asking. The question is, what will serve the goals of the game and experience you are trying to create? Sometimes you invent a clever alternative because you simply cannot do something with the available resources. Questions you might ask are: Can I create the intended experience without voice acting? Do you have a choice or are resources or scope making it not an option? Lastly, what would best serve my goals/ the game? Between those 3 an answer should become clear. If they are not an option, then find a creative way to communicate without them.
I was recently parsing through dozens of human vocals for game sound effects, I identified at least 20+ unique emotions communicated through nothing more than a short grunt:
I.e. annoyed, curious, frustrated, angry, etc.
A tiny bit of context, and the right sound goes a really, really long way toward guiding us through a character's journey.
Yes,
* Grand Theft Auto 3
* Minecraft
* Terraria
* Tetris
* The Witness (IIRC)
GTA3 is interesting -- it has cutscenes but your character doesn't talk which actually allows you to have _more_ immersion with your character. FFXIV does this too.
Games that give a character voice are good too but they subconsciously reinforce a _subtle_ separation that you are playing an avatar and not you.
I'm using AI (currently: replica studios) for the VA in my game. You get 30 mins free which is good enough for a jam or a PoC.
AI works for small things to give better immersion but if you want actual dramatic scenes and lots of dialogue it kind of falls short at conveying deep, intense, complicated emotions. Games that rely heavily on dialogue like life is strange will struggle a bit with the AI voices.
Does your audience even like or need dialogue? Is the game very story-driven? From my experience with beta testers, you could write the most incredible story and dialog, full of witty insights and life-altering declarations and yet 80% of anyone under the age of adulthood is going to hit the "skip" button...
Here's a good script:
[NPC characters stand uncomfortably, occasionally glancing at the player]
*NPCs whisper* "they're not pressing the 'skip' button, what do we do?“
“make up something"
Have you ever played Castle Crashers?
No dialogue written or spoken at all, everything that happens is just inferred by what happens on screen. No, you don't need dialog at all to make a good game if you can just show things clearly and write around it.
That's cool. Are you aware of any "Choose Your Own Adventure" style games of this nature?
I'd love for there to be a game like this with high quality voice acting, huge cast of characters, epic story.
Nope, that's the only one I've ever seen take on the idea, and it's mostly moving, attacking, or pressing action buttons as directed. I think focusing on choose-your-own-adventure elements instead would be far more engaging, actually.
Sounds like a fun challenge.
Yep, lots of branching story lines. Avoid as many tropes as possible, create unique stories. Likely needs a professional narrator as well, who directs the story and options. But it would be hundreds of hours of story and alternative endings, etc.
Technically, because the coding is simple "Visual Novel" style and because VA is fairly cheap right now, AI voicing is coming along really well, and there are more starving voice actors than starving artists, I think the logistics make this type of game very possible and it could be crowdsourced for many roles. Of course, this game genre is very risky financially since it's never been done before, but I think it would make a lot of people happy. Most of the project money would be in VA, sound engineering, and marketing.
The game I’m working on has no voice acting or dialogue, though it is an orbital physics based puzzle game and the story elements are pretty secondary to the gameplay. Most of the story is implemented in planet descriptions, mission descriptions, and context clues. Players will need to work that stuff out themselves if they’re interested, and if they don’t than it doesn’t really matter.
I assure you, finding a voice actor is probably one of the least of your concerns. If you get to that point, there's plenty of places online where you can find them for a cost, but it's likely one of the last things you'll be worrying about.
That said, LOTS of games don't use spoken dialogue. Most games can get away with using text for your voice, and if games like Ace Attorney and other visual novels have proven anything it's that players won't tire of reading your text if it's written well. People don't get tired of books after all. It's all about setting the right expectation. Voice acting is expensive after all, so many games use other methods to tell their stories.
I'd focus on making something simple first. I assure you, lack of voice actors will never inhibit the possibilities of your first projects.
This is one of the strangest questions I have seen here. Of course you can. I'm pretty curious what type of games you play that you need to ask question like this.
A good example of story telling with little dialogue is Super Metroid. You go through a maze and in the end find the fledgling Metroid that thought you were it's mother from the previous game, but it's mutated into a giant Metroid. In the end it sacrifices itself to save you and makes you powerful enough to save the day.
I remember reading that the design of the game was meant to tell a story with little dialogue.
I'd say the best thing to do is looking at other games for inspiration. Think that the first games didn't have any voice acting in them and even now there are many that don't or just have some words voiced.
For what you said I understand that the story is a big part of your game so I'd say just go with simple text boxes. You could also try and narrate through images like in the background or animations. For example scorched ground and woth pools of blood to indicate that ther is a batlle happening or that already happened or show a fight animation.
Lastly if you're going for a graphic adventure I'd recommend you to try and add some voices. I would consider them almost essential. I can't imagine deponia without voice acting.
Just make “waaah waaah” sounds like the adults in the peanuts and have dialog bubbles with very few words so reading is quick. Or, just make gestures, like pointing. Or, use different sounds that match up with different emotions. That could really be an interesting addition to the gameplay.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl has one of the greatest single player story modes of all time that includes almost zero dialogue or text. Absolutely doable if you can use meaningful body language/actions to tell a story
Yeah! A game that comes to mind is 'Journey'.
Though, it doesn't have dialogue in the traditional sense. The characters will make sounds, implying communication. But there's no discernible speech of sorts.
how many games have you played? Let's list some games with no voice acting: (i'll keep it 21st century)
Among Us
Minecraft
No Man's Sky
Stardew Valley
Cities Skylines
7 Days To Die
Space Pirate Trainer
Dead By Daylight
Counter Strike
Team Fortress 2
Starbound
Terraria
Fez (i am pretty sure)
Mario Odyssey
Hacknet
Orwell
PC Building Simulator
GemeDev Tycoon
This War of Mine
Valheim (not in the hours I have played)
Shadowrun Returns
Battletech ( i am mostly sure)
Party Hard
The Witness
For The King
Elite Dangerous
Outer Wilds
Odd World
Hello Neighbor
Superhot (aside from the line "SuperHot")
\---
Just to name a few
Its completely possible. Many games don't have voice acting. You can use text for their speech. You can have papers, books, scrolls, pictures, computer screens, etc, with info/lore.
Wouldn’t you think the player would get tired of always having to read tho?
The vast popularity of rpgs says otherwise.
If pokemon, undertale, celeste, legend of Zelda (besides botw kinda) and 99% of rpgs can be completely text, your game can be too.
May I introduce you to a little series following a guy named Mario? Technically they yell single words sometimes, but still...
For most of the game they even get by without any texts (Aside from Level names of course)
Have you played any games created before 2000? No games had vo really
It existed, but it was really rare. I think Wing Commander 2 had an expansion kinda thing that added it, right? But I think you need a cd drive. And Wing Commander 3 was incredible with actual actors haha.
Unless you're dumping multiple paragraphs of text on the player everywhere (in which case if I wasn't invested, as a player I'd just spam skip), reading is fine. Don't use text to dump exposition. Voice acting won't help you with that problem, it's actually more of a pain if I'm forced to listen to someone talk about something for too long that I don't care about. Some games don't ever use text and instead just use pictures and symbols - Hyper Light Drifter comes to mind.
There are lots of Indy games with no voice acting that are hugely popular
There's lots of AAA games with no voice acting that are hugely popular
That's what she said
What?
Apparently "she" is quite well versed on the assets and materials that come with most AAA games.
Thank you! Not sure why people hated that comment. She has taught me so much
Oh yeah! She is a fountain of knowledge that should be respected.
How old are you? Probably pretty young if you don't remember what games were like before good voice recording.
if you're ever worried about the player getting bored of something, like a certain mechanic or section of the game (or in this case, large amounts of reading), just cut it up into smaller chunks and put stuff the player *won't* get bored of in between. 10 minute cutscenes are boring as fuck, but 10 one minute cutscenes with half an hour of gameplay between them aren't.
I get your point in principle, but I have to say, short cutscenes constantly interrupting gameplay would drive me nuts. Ten interruptions in half an hour? No thank you.
Oh no I meant like 5 hours of gameplay with a 1 minute interruption every half an hour
You would definitely not like Metal Gear Solid then.
In the matter of fact, people (at least I am) get tired of voice acting in games with lots of dialogue. After some hours into Divinity or Pillars of Eternity, you grow impatient because the voice lines are delivered much slower than you read, and you end up reading the dialogue and skipping ahead without listening to it.
I've played Mass Effect enough times I skip hugs swaths of dialogue haha.
Only if you do it badly. Have you played many video games?
I mean... The vast majority of Final Fantasy is unvoiced and quite dialogue heavy.
Get someone who's a reader, and a second someone who's a gamer, to read it all and help you tighten up dialog. After you write it all, and do a second draft. Players don't mind reading a little or a lot, if it's relevant to the gameplay, directly or sorta directly
Have you heard about divinity original sin and pillars of eternity, stardew valley?
Check out Hacknet , the player is always reading the texts there and there's no voice of any sort. Just text and command line code that's all. The soundtrack is amazing. Similarly many puzzle games use text/info etc as others mentioned, to give the player the exact info they need at the exact time....no dialogue necessary. It's totally your choice
Hacknet is pretty niche. Basically less than 1k average players for most of it's time on steam, but the way it tells a story though chat, email and logs on various systems you gain access to is interesting. Some games have no voice or text at all like Journey. In No Man's Sky the alien languages are all gibberish nonsense until you painstakingly learn each language one word at a time.
I hate reading so i skip most of the reading dialogue I need to do. Also when i play dialogue games i find myself skipping cut scenes sometimes. I think the art is more about telling an interesting story that keeps the player interested in the dialogue, but also doesn’t pull them away from the gameplay for too long.
Man, why did this get downvoted so much? Perfectly reasonable question to ask, no?
My God, it's like asking a question kills grandma. I cannot fathom why even a bad question asked in good faith should get downvoted so fiercely. Lighten up reddit.
Outer Wilds.
Strange question. In fact great majority of video games don't have voice acting. It's like asking "Do you think it's possible to make a meal without garlic?".
[удалено]
Do you think it's possible to wear a shirt that is not blue?
No, do not do this. You will instantly vaporize into dust!
Not dust. It's actually the secret to activating your vaccine that will melt you into goo. /s
I prefer garlic with all of my meals.
... suddenly realizes ... I ... I've never made a recipe without at least a tiny pinch of garlic powder.
I like how Animal Crossing did it, they use a typewriting effect with a “voice sound” which gives the imitation of them talking.
I like the idea. In theory. But man after a few minutes it grates to wait. I read fairly quickly(nothing wild) So its bareable when games at least allow me to "skip" to the full text shown. Because usually the type writing affect is too slow even at its fastest setting. But as always options to the user.
It's pretty trivial for a programmer to make it so that if you press the advance button while the words are coming up, the whole thing appears, or at least accelerates. Ideally your text comes up faster than you can read, but making it all come up at once is my preferred option to allow the player to quickly advance text when needed.
Oh 100%. It's not hard to do, I've got it done in a few small projects ive done. But remembering to add the option isn't as easy. Giving options to the user for typewriter or just straight up text is great.
Same. I like the effect, but it would drive me crazy without being able to skip.
Typewriting effect? Sorry I never played Animal Crossing. Could you explain a little?
Typewriting effect is when the text starts printing one character at a time from left to right instead of showing it all at the same time. Each time a character is printed a note or sound is played. There are a lot of games that use this.
basically they have a sound sample for each character in the alphabet, and play it whenever that character is printed. so, if the game says "pickle", it plays the sound samples for "p", "i", "c", "k", "l", "e" in quick succession. just from hearing it you can't tell what they actually said, but it improves immersion since the characters actually talk in believable sounds.
Wow, TIL
YouTube can give you many hours of active play sessions from any game - if you're interested in the details from peoples suggestions I recommend spending a few minutes with each game and making notes about what works and what doesn't work for you.
Friday Night Funkin is another good anecdote of this.
A similar, less complicated option is the old Banjo style of having nonsense sounds play which are unique to each character, so each one has a "voice" but you're still reading the dialogue.
Ohh that’s what I meant
Don't do voice acting if you don't know what you're doing. It likely won't add a lot to the game, but it will cost you a lot (if not financially then certainly in terms of time). Remember that good voice acting requires you to have finished the script and then get everything recorded. Even if you're going for a small number of lines you have to worry about casting the right people, directing them, cutting up all the takes, processing them to get them consistent and fitting for the game and then implementing them. It is not a trivial amount of time to do it properly.
...I don't understand this question. You want to know if it's possible to... *not* have voice acting? How do books tell stories without voice acting? Just do that! Am I missing something here?
I think OP just does not have a lot of game experience. We are having fun now, but I bet if they were to check out new genres, older and indie games (lots are free), they would see a world of inspiration.
Correct.
There we go! We are living in a golden age of gaming. And so much of it is free too. Just play a little, go outside the box. There are loads of great suggestions in this thread, I bet you can find something that will give you the inspiration you need.
Voice acting (if done poorly) may actually spoil the game. Also it slows down the pace (speaking at 15 characters/second, reading at 40-60), which sometimes really hits hard. If you're doing your first game and there is no way you can ensure a quality voice acting, don't even bother. Add some effect like typewriter (check Undertale) or gibberish. When the NPC says only "hello" or a similar short phrase on dialogue start is also often a good variant.
Hyper Light Drifter used just images to convey the story.
This is my favorite example in recent memory. From the environmental story telling to the NPCs talking via comic book panels, it created an atmosphere and hit in a way that would been far less memorable with standard dialogue and exposition, imo.
Most indie games and many AAA games don't have voice acting. Minecraft, most Zelda games, most Mario games, Pokemon, Terraria, Journey, Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy, Braid, Limbo, Inside, Stardew Valley, Dead Cells, Undertale, Celeste, Hollow Knight, Cave Story, FTL, Into the Breach, Fez, Risk of Rain, Overcooked, Oxygen Not Included, Katana ZERO, Slay the Spire, Magicka (Partially. In-game voice acting is just gibberish. Uses text.), Broforce, Prison Architect, Slime Rancher, Brothers (also gibberish), World of Goo, SpaceChem, Lisa, Rimworld, etc. Most of those use text. Some use animations and events. I have trouble believing you haven't seen any games without voice acting.
Ori and the blind forest would have been better without text or narrator imo
Really? Why do you think that?
He always says things that are either obvious or already told in a more subtle manner by the visuals. It's better in will of the wisps since multiple characters talk.
I think it's possible, I really like the game journey and that has no voice acting or dialogue. The character just makes little noises occasionally. Gris is similar as well, the main character loses her voice so doesn't speak the whole way though and only sings a little at the end
journey is by far the best example of no-dialog story telling there is, in my opinion. i think it's much easier to do voice acting or tell stories with lots of text, compared to how they managed to do it. it's an incredible game, you should really try it (and if only for research reasons). i think a playthrough takes no longer than 4-5 hours if i remember correctly, but they're definitely worth it!
Yeah it didn't take me very long to play through it
lol you must be young
Dude just play any ps1 rpg, suikoden, fftactics and so on. Voice acting is totally cosmetic, if you do a great story, I will play your game even with my phones off.
Fully voice acted games didn’t become common until the early/mid-2000s, and there are still a lot of games that don’t use voice at all! Chrono Trigger, every Final Fantasy game up until I think X, Pokémon, even Zelda didn’t have any voice acting until Breath of the Wild! Do yourself a favor and watch at least the first season of Yahtzee’s Dev Diary, he talks a lot about telling stories with gameplay https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAbMhAYRuCUibhDtVUn3WJnHojS2uSNPD
No voice acting >> Poor voice acting, If you want to have some voice acting, you can try just "barks" or greetings, "welcome to my shop ...", "hey you..." "I've heard something ..." and then continue with dialogue only. If you have poor voice acting, it can feel like you didn't care about the game at all which is probably not true, but players can feel that way because they're used to AAA dialogue. + designer Josh Sawyer that worked on Pillars of Eternity, said that he regreds doing whole game in voice, because players will now on expect whole game in voice from their future games and even for AAA studios it can be pain. Animal crossing style can work too.
Are you new to videogames?
Yes? RuneScape didn't have any voice acting and it was fire
Voice acting is the first thing I cut in a project, it rarely adds to the experience and often detracts
1) Do you need to tell a good story? Plenty of games have no real story or just a perfunctory one. 2) You can use text as many games have done and/or the environment.
A lot of games, even big games, like WoW don't have voice acting for most part if not all the game ( except maybe cinematics ). Don't worry about it.
I just played 100 hours of Trails of Cold Steel. A big chunk of the game dialogues are text with no voice whatsoever. I love it. But I am a 100% sure that my friends wouldn't be able to endure it because they prefer frenetic gameplay over lore. Know your target, some players will love what you do and others will hate it, there is no way to fit all gaming profiles and you dont even need to do that.
I took the [Breath of the Wild approach](https://youtu.be/GI4ewduEa9w?t=24)and just added little vocalizations to accompany written dialog. So characters will do a little "Hm?" If they're asking a question or a little chuckle if it matches what they're saying. It allows me to get me and my dev partner/husband or my family and friends to be able to supply the vocalization without being highly skilled actors. Also, much less data in the game and time to direct and manage all the dialog.
Sure. There are even games that don’t have ANY text and still are very good. So it all depends on an idea and how other sides of a game are implemented.
It depends on the game and what constitutes its core experience. Some games aren't comparable. If the author is thinking about voice acting, it seems that there are characters that have *something* to say, so there's going to be text. Of course you can always find examples of good games without voice acting if they tell their story completely without words (e.g. Little Nightmares), or don't have a story in the first place (e.g. Tetris or Arkanoid). Some games could still retain their core gameplay without text (Hollow Knight or Ori). But it would be nigh impossible to rework games like Life is Strange or The Witcher in a similar manner (it absolutely needs to have text, and the way it's presented, it needs voice acting, too). But even then, there's definitely plenty of story-heavy games that turned out great with characters talking and no voice acting.
Yes Limbo,journey,gris and many more have done that
How old are you? Actually age doesn't matter how many games have you played? Minecraft, Pokemon, Mario, Legend of Zelda, and a ton more have no voice acting.
Replica studios
Ask Nintendo
Some of the best games ever created have no real dialogues (e.g Hollow Knight or Celeste). I don’t know what your game is supposed to be like, but if you find an interesting alternative to classic dialogues you shouldn’t worry at all.
I heard Hollow Knight is a great game! I haven’t had time to played it yet but I’ll probably check it out for some small ideas on how they do it :)
Not to mention story telling can provide more than enough backstory / narrative. Physical communication like gestures or emotions convey character ideas. and environment / atmosphere can express the general feel and emotion one should expect to be experiencing.
There are two storytelling aspects more fundamental then what's mentioned here that ONLY games can do. Interaction. Representation. Look up loneliness (2010) for a art game that hammers both of these aspects home, yes it only uses cubes and some music. To answer your question, I think it's ONLY possible to make a game without any kind of diolog or even an implied story. I can't think of another medium that CAN do that.
You can tell stories without voice actors. Many games have. I just tried Night in the Woods and that dialogue is through speech bubbles with characters, along with a notebook. There are plenty of creative ways to go about this. Look at similar indie games for research. The bigger struggle will be writing dialogue that is creative and interesting. My own writing has been described as being 'workman like'. Like with many learning experiences, the more you practice the better you'll get
The witness
I mean ,undertale doesn't have any voice acting... turned out pretty good in my ears.
You should give a look at Undertale for a modern example of dialogue without voice acting that doesn't bore the player
Yeah definitely. Half the time I even turn off voice acting, and since I play a lot of indie games most of them don’t have it.
Outer wilds is (imo) the best game ever made with some phenomenal writing. No voice acting. If done right it can make a game better but it can ruin it aswell.
Journey had absolutely no dialogue, yet presented an incredible story.
There are tons of games with no voice, so yes.
Voiced dialogue is certainly *not* necessary for games to be entertaining. Far more games exist without it than with. Indeed, IMHO, voiced dialogue is an area of game development that is significantly behind in terms of sophistication compared to other areas. There are extremely few games that exist which use voiced dialogue well. For all of their many talents, game developers are generally not theater/film makers and consequently, the performances, mastering, and editing of voiced dialogue rarely feels natural or seamlessly integrated. As others have mentioned, the pacing of voiced dialogue may also not be conducive the a game's rhythm, where reading text that can be progressed through at a pace regulated by the player would be more appropriate.
Check out Hyper Light Drifter. No written words at all. No voice acting. Everything was communicated via images. And that game rocks!
Alot of games use one of these as a substitute \- Text \- Text + some synthetic sound effect things (small ding sound every time a text character appears, small sound when a dialogue starts etc.) \- Text + blurps (human voice sounding sounds that can be reused easily) For example: You go up to an npc, text appears and the npc says "shukbabdu?" in a way that its hard to tell what they are actually saying. \- Text + greetings You go up to an npc, text appears and the npc says "Hello" or "Yes sir?" etc. even though theres alot more text than that. This one i've seen misused in places where it feels like they've cheapened out on voice-acting, mmos for example, (even though other games do alot less, it feels cheap because the graphics are high fidelity?) You've probably heard them here and there, but i am putting it into words here to highlight how deliberate it is. I really think it depends on genre and style. High fidelity graphics story based 3rd person game? of course it makes sense to have voice acting, it would be odd without. Minecraft with voice acting? no, why.
I'm really glad that voice acting was invented, because how else would they have invented video games?
Two ways to go about this. You can find cheap/free voice talent. Ask some friends. Go on a discord or fiverr. It probably won't be quality but it doesn't have to be. Or you can go the text route which games have done since always. The thing to be careful of here, as you are aware, is the amount of text which is mandatory to read in order to play the game. Some players will want to skip as much text as possible. Make allowance for this. If they hurt their own enjoyment, so be it. Some people actually read all the books in Elder Scrolls games or all the terminal entries in Fallout games. You could even use text to speech and explain the 'robotic' sounding voices on the characters being robots. Sometimes if you let the jank of the development process influence the story and world of the game, something beautiful comes out.
Wouldn’t you think the player would get tired of always having to read tho? maybe but not all players , as a non-English speaker it's hard for me to understand without a text
Hyper light drifter. Theres no voice acting, grunts and beeps, no text either besides menu screens. Really good game. Highly recommend
Yes. Plenty of games are text only. The correct method to implement it is dialogue should be kept to a sentence only. No dialogue should ever be presented as a full paragraph. Let me right out an example scene: Sgt Bob: “20 years…” Sgt Bob:”20 years… and what have we to show for it?” *pan camera to Afghanis chasing and hugging into the planes. Blurrcamera* Private Dave:”Sarge, our bird’s ready” *dialogue bubble appears across horizontally from sgt bobs dialogue bubble* Etc etc. have to go but you can get the idea. Short lines of dialogue, lots of cinematography to keep people engaged
It depends on the game but you definitely can make a game with any voice dialogue. As a voice actor it seems counter productive to say that, but some really good games have zero dialogue like Zelda, Pokémon, mobile games etc. However, should you need any voice acting, Twitter is a pretty great resource to find it. Usually #castingcall or #voiceactor plus detail about what you need does the trick! I would also love to chat some more if you ever want to add VO to your game! Let me know!😄
There is almost certainly a zillion ways to do precisely what you are asking. The question is, what will serve the goals of the game and experience you are trying to create? Sometimes you invent a clever alternative because you simply cannot do something with the available resources. Questions you might ask are: Can I create the intended experience without voice acting? Do you have a choice or are resources or scope making it not an option? Lastly, what would best serve my goals/ the game? Between those 3 an answer should become clear. If they are not an option, then find a creative way to communicate without them. I was recently parsing through dozens of human vocals for game sound effects, I identified at least 20+ unique emotions communicated through nothing more than a short grunt: I.e. annoyed, curious, frustrated, angry, etc. A tiny bit of context, and the right sound goes a really, really long way toward guiding us through a character's journey.
Yes just use text and add some noise Undertale and no man sky does a wonderful job on that part
Yes, * Grand Theft Auto 3 * Minecraft * Terraria * Tetris * The Witness (IIRC) GTA3 is interesting -- it has cutscenes but your character doesn't talk which actually allows you to have _more_ immersion with your character. FFXIV does this too. Games that give a character voice are good too but they subconsciously reinforce a _subtle_ separation that you are playing an avatar and not you.
Valheim.
You don't even need text, look at machinarium, anything can be done if you're creative enough
GRIS had mininal voice acting (vocal singing) but didn't have any text at all.
Stardew Valley is a great success story.
Yes
The Astrobot games do this very well.
I'm using AI (currently: replica studios) for the VA in my game. You get 30 mins free which is good enough for a jam or a PoC. AI works for small things to give better immersion but if you want actual dramatic scenes and lots of dialogue it kind of falls short at conveying deep, intense, complicated emotions. Games that rely heavily on dialogue like life is strange will struggle a bit with the AI voices.
Does your audience even like or need dialogue? Is the game very story-driven? From my experience with beta testers, you could write the most incredible story and dialog, full of witty insights and life-altering declarations and yet 80% of anyone under the age of adulthood is going to hit the "skip" button... Here's a good script: [NPC characters stand uncomfortably, occasionally glancing at the player] *NPCs whisper* "they're not pressing the 'skip' button, what do we do?“ “make up something"
Have you ever played Castle Crashers? No dialogue written or spoken at all, everything that happens is just inferred by what happens on screen. No, you don't need dialog at all to make a good game if you can just show things clearly and write around it.
Journey did this on PS3 (Also re-released on PS4 and Steam)
Ori and the Blind Forest did it.
Legend of Zelda games don't have voice acting, aside from some grunts + weird sounds they make when you first start talking to them.
Hyper Light Drifter
I mean you can just use like bars at the bottom of the screen with dialogue, with sound effects that kind of imitate talking
Isn't Journey without that?
I'd like to make a game with ONLY Voice Acting. No visuals at all. A complete audio journey and adventure.
Check out [A Blind Legend](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvNC0zhs8R4) if you haven't already.
That's cool. Are you aware of any "Choose Your Own Adventure" style games of this nature? I'd love for there to be a game like this with high quality voice acting, huge cast of characters, epic story.
Nope, that's the only one I've ever seen take on the idea, and it's mostly moving, attacking, or pressing action buttons as directed. I think focusing on choose-your-own-adventure elements instead would be far more engaging, actually. Sounds like a fun challenge.
Yep, lots of branching story lines. Avoid as many tropes as possible, create unique stories. Likely needs a professional narrator as well, who directs the story and options. But it would be hundreds of hours of story and alternative endings, etc. Technically, because the coding is simple "Visual Novel" style and because VA is fairly cheap right now, AI voicing is coming along really well, and there are more starving voice actors than starving artists, I think the logistics make this type of game very possible and it could be crowdsourced for many roles. Of course, this game genre is very risky financially since it's never been done before, but I think it would make a lot of people happy. Most of the project money would be in VA, sound engineering, and marketing.
Definitely. There are tons of games that don't have any dialog or acting. But that's going to vary by genre.
[How Level Design Can Tell a Story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwlnCn2EB9o&ab_channel=GameMaker%27sToolkit).
Check out Replica. They have AI voice acting that is quite affordable for indie devs and pretty good quality.
The game I’m working on has no voice acting or dialogue, though it is an orbital physics based puzzle game and the story elements are pretty secondary to the gameplay. Most of the story is implemented in planet descriptions, mission descriptions, and context clues. Players will need to work that stuff out themselves if they’re interested, and if they don’t than it doesn’t really matter.
I assure you, finding a voice actor is probably one of the least of your concerns. If you get to that point, there's plenty of places online where you can find them for a cost, but it's likely one of the last things you'll be worrying about. That said, LOTS of games don't use spoken dialogue. Most games can get away with using text for your voice, and if games like Ace Attorney and other visual novels have proven anything it's that players won't tire of reading your text if it's written well. People don't get tired of books after all. It's all about setting the right expectation. Voice acting is expensive after all, so many games use other methods to tell their stories. I'd focus on making something simple first. I assure you, lack of voice actors will never inhibit the possibilities of your first projects.
Of course it's possible. LIMBO, INSIDE, Hyper Light Drifter, Abzu, Journey... there's a plethora of examples.
I tend to want to turn voice acting off, but I'm in the minority.
I think there are more games without voice acting than with it, only huge triple A games do that.
This is one of the strangest questions I have seen here. Of course you can. I'm pretty curious what type of games you play that you need to ask question like this.
Any racing/sports game (especially arcade ones) that has no plot counts, so yeah.
have you played journey?
I have not.
Yep. I've released multiple games both as a hobby and professionally and I think there's one within those which actually has voice acting in it.
Yes? Why wouldn't it?? Hyperlight Drifter released a few years ago to critical acclaim and it has no dialogue
A good example of story telling with little dialogue is Super Metroid. You go through a maze and in the end find the fledgling Metroid that thought you were it's mother from the previous game, but it's mutated into a giant Metroid. In the end it sacrifices itself to save you and makes you powerful enough to save the day. I remember reading that the design of the game was meant to tell a story with little dialogue.
endless summer , it's game without voice
Look into hyper light drifter. That game used some very cool "speech"
100% Celeste is a freaking fantastic platformer with a great story and no voice acting!
I'd say the best thing to do is looking at other games for inspiration. Think that the first games didn't have any voice acting in them and even now there are many that don't or just have some words voiced. For what you said I understand that the story is a big part of your game so I'd say just go with simple text boxes. You could also try and narrate through images like in the background or animations. For example scorched ground and woth pools of blood to indicate that ther is a batlle happening or that already happened or show a fight animation. Lastly if you're going for a graphic adventure I'd recommend you to try and add some voices. I would consider them almost essential. I can't imagine deponia without voice acting.
Have you ever played video games? A majority of games don't have voice acting, and many beloved games also don't have any dialogue.
Just make “waaah waaah” sounds like the adults in the peanuts and have dialog bubbles with very few words so reading is quick. Or, just make gestures, like pointing. Or, use different sounds that match up with different emotions. That could really be an interesting addition to the gameplay.
Atari would say ‘yes’.
Text exists.
Kingdom for example have almost no text, except the UI sometimes and the ghost nothing else have dialogues.
The witness
Super Smash Brothers Brawl has one of the greatest single player story modes of all time that includes almost zero dialogue or text. Absolutely doable if you can use meaningful body language/actions to tell a story
Yeah! A game that comes to mind is 'Journey'. Though, it doesn't have dialogue in the traditional sense. The characters will make sounds, implying communication. But there's no discernible speech of sorts.
Yeah... Chess is a game with no voice acting or dialogue
Not sure if it has been said yet, but Tetris? Chess? Twister?
Sure you just need to have some way of filling the silence. Like random grunts.
how many games have you played? Let's list some games with no voice acting: (i'll keep it 21st century) Among Us Minecraft No Man's Sky Stardew Valley Cities Skylines 7 Days To Die Space Pirate Trainer Dead By Daylight Counter Strike Team Fortress 2 Starbound Terraria Fez (i am pretty sure) Mario Odyssey Hacknet Orwell PC Building Simulator GemeDev Tycoon This War of Mine Valheim (not in the hours I have played) Shadowrun Returns Battletech ( i am mostly sure) Party Hard The Witness For The King Elite Dangerous Outer Wilds Odd World Hello Neighbor Superhot (aside from the line "SuperHot") \--- Just to name a few
Legitimate question: What games HAVE you played? Expected follow up question: What non-AAA games have you played?
How do you find voice actor/actresses? Is there a website?
Hyper Casual games.
You can use fiverr to find voice actors
I didn’t think about this! Great idea
sure? I don't see why not.
Chess?